Why Liza Koshy Disappeared

What happens when one of the biggest creators on the platform disappears? Please welcome Liza Koshy. Liza Koshy, everybody. 25 million subscribers. And you were the fastest growing YouTuber ever. Spending time online came detrimental to my mental health. So I had to go. She's back. Liza Koshy posted a video of resurgence to her second YouTube channel. Her little hiatus is done. Today, we're going to break down Liza Koshy's unusual path from making vines for her friends to making YouTube videos for millions to making movies for Netflix. As well as Hulu, Nickelodeon, MTV. She's basically everywhere. Liza has battled a lot of ups and downs in her career. And there are three lessons that we can all learn from creators like Liza who leave YouTube. And let's get into it. When I think about Liza Koshy, she's a combination of Will Smith in that she's just a natural born performer. She's a little bit of Kristen Wiig in that she has all of these different characters that she can play. Then she has this Jenna Marbles influence, right? Where she can control a frame all on her own, like so many great YouTubers can do. And then she's kind of the original Emma Chamberlain in that she's been willing to be vulnerable and open up on YouTube in a way that we kind of hadn't seen before. And also that you'll kind of just watch her do things that you maybe wouldn't watch other people do. Like I recently watched Emma make a soup and I would probably watch Liza do that just because she's so entertaining. She's a relationship based creator. We've talked about that term before, but it's not really about the idea as much as it's about your relationship with her. You'll tune in and watch her do anything. What is it you do on YouTube? Um, I am myself. So let's go back to the beginning. Where did she even come from? She grew up in Houston, Texas and started making Vines, six second videos just for her close group of friends. Come on, let's do homework. Oh shoot, Forever 21 is having a sale. Homework. I wonder if I can follow the fan. Dang it, homework. And she grew very quickly to the point where when she was touring colleges on her college tour, she was getting recognized and people were taking pictures with her. She talks about how initially her dad was very apprehensive about her having a following online. It is a weird, strange thing when your child has millions of people following them. He sat me down, looked at my phone and made me go through and delete every single one of my followers. Like block each one so they would stop following me because what like he's trying to protect you, right? But when he saw that all these people were so excited to see her on the college tour, he kind of came around to the idea that maybe she is doing something here of value that could be a career for her and ended up being very supportive of her moving out to Los Angeles. She wasn't the only Vine star to move out to LA at this time. This was like the time that if you were popular on Vine, you moved in. It surprises me that you weren't on Vine and that you didn't move. I think we actually tried to make Vines. Do you not remember? I blocked it out of my memory now. Yeah, I think it takes a lot more than six seconds for someone to understand me. Now, amongst these Vine stars that moved to LA was David Dobrik. And Liza and David supposedly met in 2015 at a party and bonded over the fact that they were both too young to drink just to continue to remember how young Liza and all of them were. Right now, we're driving to VidCon. It's going to be crazy. Now, over the next couple of years, she's uploading every single Wednesday to YouTube. I have been long awaiting to make a YouTube channel so you guys can actually know the real Liza and get to know me more than six seconds breath. And she's not only growing through her own content that's continuing to grow a fan base, but she's also featured in David Dobrik's content and the Vlog Squad content as that's starting to catch traction. Her and David are kind of this like it couple of YouTube and she's just propelled into mega stardom. And because of how connected her audience was to her personality, it made her this natural fit to become a host. And she also played characters on her channel, which made it a natural progression for her to move into acting. Mom's not dead, you moron. She works at the chemical plant on the line. No way. It was also at this time that she made a video that kind of changed the trajectory of her career. She made a parody of Vogue's 73 questions. We're here to do the 73 question interview. And it ended up getting way more views than the actual 73 questions that are on Vogue's YouTube channel. And they saw the video and then invited her. And she was the first YouTuber to be featured in Vogue's 73 questions series. Liza, it's Vogue. Oh, my God, the real one? Liza, it is the real one. In her parody video, she alludes to getting invited to the Met Gala, which then she ends up being a host at the Met Gala, which is the mainstream celebrity event of the year. The co-chair of the night. How does it feel? What does it mean to you? It's an honor. That brings us to our first lesson in her career, which is social hacking. Yeah, I mean, collaboration is the essence of growth. It's how you grow as a new creator. And you can either do that by actually being with the person or the other group that you want to collaborate with, or you can use this social hacking method, which is just kind of tacking on to the attention that they have. Here we are in person where you've done your massively successful parodies of this format. Right, exactly. Because you're tapping into their audience, plus, potentially, you're getting their attention. You're getting this network effect without actually collaborating with the individual. You think we'll ever get invited to the Met Gala? I think about it often. But I always just wonder, okay, I want to go, but what would I even have to do to get invited? And then I have this deep-rooted fear that you'll get invited. Oh, yeah. But I won't. Right, right. After the Met Gala, she gets more opportunities outside of YouTube. She signs a deal with MTV to host TRL. She's hosted a holiday party and starred in a show for YouTube Red. She was a host at the Golden Globe Awards. She interviewed Barack Obama. So 2017 is a huge year for her. And at the end of 2017, she announces that she will be acting on YouTube in her scripted original series, Liza on Demand. Make sure to tune into YouTube Originals to watch your favorite show, Now, what's amazing about this time period, when I think about Liza, she's also still uploading a YouTube video every Wednesday. They have like Mr. Beast style viewership on just her personality. Q&As with 47 million views. Of just her being vulnerable, being charismatic, being funny. Like that was driving 40 plus million views. And she's doing that at the time as pretty much a one person team. I think at that time, she had only just brought on a manager. So she's still editing. She's still thinking about distribution with her social media content. At the same time, she's doing all of this talent work, like where she just has to show up and host or act. And when you think about everything that goes into uploading a weekly video, it's a lot more than just being in front of the camera. For example, for us, when we think about our time distribution as creators, this, what we're doing right now, sitting and recording the show, this is actually what we do the least. This is, this makes up probably 5% of our week. Yeah, when you think about the term creator, you imagine them creating, being on camera, and that's the job. That's the job. But for us, you know, that's about 5% of the week. The rest of the 95% of our week is writing, scripting, designing thumbnails, brainstorming, being in sales meetings. And then probably the bulk is post-production. And I think as you take a step back in terms of like a lesson for creators, write down a week in the life of what do you want to be doing? Do you want to be on camera for most of the week? Or do you want to do everything that I just mentioned that goes into being a creator? And figure out what you want your time distribution to be. And then, you know, you can kind of build towards that. And what it seems like is that in 2018, Liza started to feel the effect of that, of like, oh, wow, this is too much of what I actually don't really want to be doing anymore. Now, all of this leads to Liza taking a break. And she announces that she's taking a break in the breakup video with David. One of us is going through some stuff. It's some rough stuff, but not stuff that they can't get through. That breakup video became one of the most watched, I mean, definitely the most watched breakup video of all time, but one of the most watched, you know, YouTube videos of that era. And I think something that stood for what was happening on YouTube compared to what was happening in traditional media. YouTube being bare your entire life, open up your soul for everyone. Traditional media, be an actor. Why did you feel it necessary to do that? I know, it's such a weird, like, generation thing. It's so private, yeah. The emotional distance between what was happening on camera and what was happening with you, like, it was actually really close together, especially for like vloggers and people who were using their life as content. And again, like we've said, Liza was focused on her personality. And that means everything that went into her personality. So it's breakup, her crying, her figuring out, you know, where she wanted to go with her relationship. That was content and that explodes on the internet. This is Patrick Starr, a beauty creator with over 4 million subscribers on YouTube. And this, this is a billboard for Jelly Smack. It's part of a larger campaign that puts creators at the forefront and on billboards all over. All right, if you haven't heard about Jelly Smack by now, I guess you're kind of out of the loop. Or you're also just not watching enough of our channel. All right, well, let's give you a refresher. Jelly Smack works with creators to grow their audience and their revenue. They do this by taking their content and distributing it across multiple platforms. And not only do they have a full staff of editors, they also have technology that'll take your videos and optimize it across multiple platforms. When you partner with Jelly Smack, they take on all of the expense. So there's no extra work for you, just extra revenue. Jelly Smack powered creators have made over 150 million dollars. They've also recently announced that they're committing 500 million dollars to accomplish creators to help them fuel their businesses. Not only are they helping creators go big, they're also taking mainstream celebrities and athletes and turning them into creators through their marquee program. They just signed MMA star Francis Ngannou, and they're going to help him produce and create content across all platforms. So if you're a creator and you feel like you'd be a good fit for Jelly Smack, go to their website, click get in touch, send them a message, and tell them that Colin and Samira sent you. There's literally a drop-down option to click Colin and Samira. I think that's so cool. That is cool. We made it on the website. Also, hashtag put Colin and Samira on a billboard. Yeah. What would our tagline be? Here it says, don't stop at creator when you can be a star. If these guys are on a billboard, you can do anything. I'll work on that. Basically, while she's taking a break from YouTube, that's when Liza on Demand is coming out on YouTube, just because that's how YouTube originals work, is that they actually debut on your own channel, which is very cool. Give me the f***ing cat! Hey! No! Hey! No! Run Liza! I'll be honest, I was skeptical about it, because I was like, wait a second, I feel like this isn't YouTube. I feel very distant from her as I watch this. This doesn't feel right. But now when I look at this situation, I think something that's really interesting is the content changed from her as content, her life as content, to this show as content. And there's something really different about those two things. Even though it's still Liza on her channel, even though literally the character is based on Liza, the show is now this entity in itself that has a team around it, that has people involved, that is something beyond Liza Koshy. And this is where we have lesson three, the third party effect. Liza talks about how, you know, once she got a team and a writer's room, there was no going back. I can't do this in my living room by myself anymore because I got spoiled with having other productions and having other people and having other creatives. It wasn't like you shut down. What we're doing here is we're creating a show. We have a team who's helping us write the show. We have a team who's helping us edit the show. We have a team who's evaluating the performance of the show, helping us make decisions. And this show itself, the Colin and Samir show, is a media property that is the product of our process and our team. And that makes it a little bit less connected to us. It almost feels like this third party. If the show episode doesn't do well, we come in the room with our team in our office and we talk about how to make the show better. If I'm alone in my bedroom making a video and it doesn't do well, it all is on me. I'm the personality. It's about my performance, my craft as talent, my craft as a performer. And I think having that arm's length distance from what you're creating versus who you are actually is really important, especially on YouTube. So went into like a writer's room and started bouncing around ideas and got so excited to work with other people. I was like, other people think like this too. That's what I fell into is creating a show on YouTube. And I think we're starting to see it more and more where creators are building teams around them, where creators are treating this more like a media company, where they're producing a product, right? That is a format or show. You don't have to be a solo creator in your room forever. You can bring on team. You can come up with names for the shows that you're making to distance yourself a little bit from the product. Whether it's in traditional Hollywood entertainment or on YouTube, you can have that happen. You can make that distance. I don't think you have a choice. If you want to build a sustainable career, I think you have to look at your work and find ways to package your work as a third party. Even for Liza today, she's not holding the camera anymore. Someone else is following her around. Someone else is probably editing it. And she has now entered an entirely new chapter of her career where she is primarily taking on these types of opportunities where she's acting or where she's hosting. She hosted New Year's Eve with Ryan Seacrest. Did you watch her New Year's Eve? I was locked in. You were locked in to Liza Koshy New Year's Eve. I sent a Slack message saying Liza is everything. No one responded to it. New Year's Eve. You were on Slack. No one's on Slack at the company. Just me watching Liza Koshy. Got it. Yeah. So when we see her on New Year's Eve, there's a lot of comments that are like, why is she there? And I wonder if there's like a big supportive fan base right now from YouTube who's like, yeah, I can't believe I get to see Liza on Netflix. Is there still that contingent? Or do you risk losing that the more and more distance you get from your content? I don't know if it matters right now because I think those comments on Twitter are implying that she's no longer relevant, right? Like she's not going to bring new eyeballs. But it doesn't matter because like New Year's Rockin' Eve or whatever is like, you know, Gen Z is not going there anyway. Right. They just need people who are talented. That's true. To carry that ship. Yeah. And she is talented. I think if she wants to regain that connection to a YouTube audience, then she has to find a format that's consistent again. And that's probably a podcast, right? Right. That's what people like Logan Paul have done. They just start a podcast. You get to show your personality. You can have a cast of characters with you and it gives you enough time to do all types of other things. Here's something that Logan Paul said on his podcast recently where he said, Gary Vee said to him that he is Will Smith right after the Fresh Prince. And I think what's interesting to think about is things move really fast. It feels like this timeline's really long. Liza's done so much in her career, but she's 25 years old. She essentially just finished her first chapter of her career. So I actually think that a lot of these people who have made it through this first chapter, right, like Liza, who have done all of these different things, who've seen all the different styles can now start to define exactly what they want to do. For her, I think that's probably going to be directing and acting. I think we're going to see her act and direct. I don't know if we're going to see her as much on social media. I don't know if we're going to see her vlog again or open up her life again, like she mentioned. It's hard to go back to giving so much of your personality when now you've experienced what it's like to have a team, to build a format, to be able to fit in your craft into a broader picture. And I think even for us in this show, it would be hard for me to try and go back to doing a video called A Day in the Life of Samir, which is a video that's on our channel. We're close. We're closing in on the NHL. We're icing them. I'm going to scream.